Buying a Ferraro like this one to tool around on the weekends for a little while will run you $20-something thousand in “use tax” whether you drive it a little or a lot. So what you’ll need to do is to make some arrangement with your cheesy exoticar dealer – if you think about it for a while, you’ll figure something out.*

And the Tax Man prolly won’t catch you.

So that’s why the 99% pays the CA DMV for auto registration and the 1% Ferrari / Lambo crowd does not.

*Oh, it’s a race car, not a regular car. Oh, as soon as I bought it I took it to, let’s see here, Nevada? Yeah, Nevada. As a 1%-er, I live in the crappy, windblown, high desert of Nevada instead of gorgeous California – do you buy that? Oh, that was a repositioning trip, and, you know, I hated it. I don’t actually like the job of ferrying Ferrari about, it’s such a burden. Oh, it’s…

1. We regulate taxi rates so drivers won’t exploit tourists and other disadvantaged souls. (Oh, you’re a rich tourist and you’re lost and your flight leaves in an hour? $200 to SFO, take it or leave it – that kind of thing.)

2. But we limit the number of cabs on the streets to help out the drivers.

3. So much so, that buying a used Lincoln Town car and illegally picking people up off of the streets after quoting exorbitant rates is a good way to score some quick cash.

4. And, the SFPD has other fish to fry and the SFMTA isn’t really focused on this issue, so we’re back to square one, with unregulated “taxi” drivers exploiting tourists and other disadvantaged souls. Oh well.

As here. These bidnessmen were trying to flag down some Yellow Cabs, but those were all full, so next come the Black Town Cars. The first one quotes a price through the door, as seen here:

Click to expand

No dice. (What did the illegal cabbie ask for – $50 to go to Union Square? Something like that.)

And then another one pulls up and then another one, which ends up picking up these dudes and whisking them away. All the while, the bidnessmen were trying to flag down a real taxi.

Here’s the aftermath, on Sacramento:

Note the City of Oakland taxi cruising up the street empty – that’s agin the rules too, as Oakland taxis aren’t allowed to pick up people in the 415.

Now you might not see this too much on a Tuesday night, but on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, it’s Katie Bar The Door out there.

This is the situation.

However, the single-party state of San Francisco is incapable of addressing this particular situation.

Now, what the Auto Return tow truck driver should have done was make up some excuse instead of towing the ride of The Nevius on that Fateful Day. You know, “technical difficulties” or something like that to buy some more time for the San Francisco Chronicle’s least intelligent employee. That would have allowed the Neve to correct his mistake by simply hopping in and driving off to the East Bay or wherever the hell he lives these days.

It wouldn’t be hard to implement a NO TOW NEVIUS policy. You know, back in the day, Willie Brown used to get pulled over all the time by the CHP when he was driving waaaaay too fast* on the I-80 back and forth to Sacramento. After Willie got stopped twice in one trip, he put a hold on the CHP’s budget. So the CHP issued Willie’s photo to all the officers on I-80 with instructions to “memorize this face” in order to give Willie favorable treatment. (Read the whole story below.) The point is that AutoReturn should find which cars CW Nevius parks illegally on the Streets of San Francisco and then give a picture of each one to all their tow truck drivers and then tell them “DO NOT TOW THESE PARTICULAR CARS!”

“One afternoon Brown briskly walked into a budget conference committee meeting late and looking angry. He immediately sat down next to [Senator] Collier and asked for a “point of personal privilege.” Collier granted him the courtesy, and Brown asked to return to an item in the budget to appropriate funds to purchase guns and other equipment for the California Highway Patrol. Brown then demanded that the funds be deleted from the budget. The trust between the two was so great that Collier asked no questions, immediately complied, and struck the CHP equipment appropriation.

At the end of the meeting, [aide Robert] Connelly asked his boss what was going on with the Highway Patrol. “He was so mad, he wouldn’t talk about it.” Finally, Brown told Connelly that he had been stopped not once but twice by CHP officers that day on his way to Sacramento from San Francisco along Interstate 80 in his bright red Porsche. Each time, the officers walked over to Brown and said, “Hey, boy, where’d you get this car?”

Connelly quickly found the CHP’s lobbyist and told him what had happened. “The guy’s eyeballs rolled clear back into his skull. He said, ‘We’ll fix it.’” By the next morning, the CHP was distributing photographs of Willie Brown to officers along the Interstate 80 corridor between San Francisco and Sacramento with orders to “memorize this face.” The CHP got its appropriation back—and more.

Brown championed pay raises for CHP officers by authoring a bill that tied their salaries to a formula based on the salaries of large municipal police forces. The measure gave Highway Patrol officers a windfall raise, and then an automatic pay raise every time one of the unionized city forces got a new contract.”

Re: Request for federal observers and election monitors in San Francisco

Dear Assistant Attorney General Perez and Secretary of State Bowen:

We write to bring to your attention news reports and accompanying videos that may indicate violations of federal and state laws intended to protect voting rights and to assure the integrity of our electoral process.

In light of published accounts in the San Francisco Chronicle* and Bay Citizen** about electioneering activities by the SF Neighbor Alliance for Ed Lee for Mayor 2011, we request that your respective offices immediately detail federal observers and state election monitors for San Francisco’s mayoral election, which is currently underway.

According to these published accounts, these electioneering activities target Cantonese speaking voters in San Francisco, and may potentially impinge on their federally protected voting rights, and also violate provisions of the California Elections Code and other laws.

• Testimony and video evidence that SF Neighbor Alliance for Ed Lee for Mayor 2011 staff employed plastic stencils and handled absentee ballots in such a manner as to prevent voters from marking their ballots for other mayoral candidates.

• Testimony that SF Neighbor Alliance for Ed Lee for Mayor 2011 staff, as apparently ineligible third parties, received and collected into plastic bags voted ballots from voters, taking ballots into their possession.

• Testimony and video evidence that SF Neighbor Alliance for Ed Lee for Mayor 2011 staff interfered with the secrecy of voting. If true, these allegations and other conduct may violate the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965, and California Election Code provisions pertaining to electioneering, corruption of voting, the Voter Bill of Rights, and other laws.

Given their gravity, the importance of protecting voting rights, and assuring voter confidence in our electoral processes, we believe federal observers and election monitors are immediately warranted, and that further investigation by your respective offices would be well advised.

Sincerely,

Jeff Adachi, Public Defender

Michela Alioto-Pier, Small Businesswoman and Mother

John Avalos, Supervisor, District 11

David Chiu, President, Board of Supervisors

Dennis Herrera, City Attorney

Joanna Rees, Entrepreneur/Educator

Leland Yee, State Senator

cc: U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón